


What Matters Most

by Raine_Wynd



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Character Study, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Mission, Slice of Life, shower thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25929436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raine_Wynd/pseuds/Raine_Wynd
Summary: Nile considers the outcome of a mission.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman
Comments: 28
Kudos: 100





	What Matters Most

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/gifts).



> Written for exmanhater for the Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology. Thanks for the prompt and the challenge of writing something under 1500 words!  
> Thanks to radarrider and LadySilver for the beta.  
> The podfic is linked below - please check out the awesomeness exmanhater did!

Grateful to be done with their last mission, Nile unpacked her bags, grimacing at the way everything stunk. She fished out the last bag of clean clothes and her toiletries, placing them on the ornately carved desk vanity, which was closest to the bathroom door.

 _Wonder if Copley knew we’d need this luxury apartment after dealing with those girls?_ The thought skittered through her mind and made her sigh. The hostages they had just rescued were two years younger than Nile, but she felt so much older.

 _Younger, more naïve, and well-connected,_ Nile reminded herself as the fury over wasted effort welled in her again. Two twenty-something female backpackers getting lost in the Egyptian desert, no word for four months, parents not worried until a ransom note had appeared had all sounded like a reasonable mission to take on – until the team went to rescue them.

An hour after dropping the women off at the US Consulate in Cairo, Egypt, remembering how one had casually taken out her $2,000 cell phone to take a photo of Joe and Nicky kissing made Nile’s mouth tighten. The excuse of ‘no Internet service, so I thought it was broken’ had not sat well with the team, especially since the phone still worked for calls.

Nile stared at herself in the mirror over the vanity. Running around in a desert after weeks on another mission in a jungle halfway around the world with barely time to bathe properly had done a number on her skin and her hair. With a sigh, she resigned herself to undoing her braids and made a note to buy some facial cleanser and moisturizer.

She usually kept her hair in braids for weeks at a time, but she was careful to undo the style every few months to prevent breakage and fallout. Taking a seat at the vanity, she undid her braids as she let out her frustration.

 _Rich girls,_ she thought viciously. _Spoiled brats who wouldn’t know real life unless it slapped them across the face. I killed two sentries for them? Should’ve saved the bullets._

Yet even as she thought that, she remembered the shock on the former hostages’ faces when Andy, tired of their seemingly endless griping, had threatened to leave them in nowhere with nothing.

 _Maybe that will be enough of a clue-by-four,_ Nile thought, but she’d heard her teammates’ assessments, seen the looks they’d exchanged.

Nile was halfway through the process when Andy stepped into the bedroom. “Bathroom’s free if you want it,” she announced.

“Thanks.” She swore as her fingers caught on another tangle. “Ow, damn it!”

Andy studied her a moment. “You want help with that?”

Nile stared at her in the mirror, startled. Post-mission, Andy was more likely to ask if she wanted to get a drink at the nearest bar.

“I used to have hair longer than yours. I promise I won’t yank.”

Nile hesitated. Andy might be centuries older than her, but her hair could be saturated in blood and come clean with a wet wipe with one pass; Nile had seen it happen too often. “It’s really tangled.”

“It’s not sewn together, is it?”

Nile shook her head. “No. When I enlisted, I wasn’t sure if the Marines would allow weaves.” She chuckled dryly. “Good thing I didn’t – they went back and forth on it for a while. I wouldn’t have been allowed to wear my hair in these braids in basic.”

“I remember you had it up,” Andy murmured. “You have a detangling comb?”

Realizing her objections were baseless, Nile nodded and pointed to it on the vanity.

Andy stepped forward and took the part Nile hadn’t touched yet and started unbraiding. Andy’s hands were gentle, and when she hit snags, she combed through them from the bottom, never the top. Nile wondered why she had never asked for help from Andy before for this simple task – then acknowledged that even after a year, Andy still had the power to intimidate her.

Silence fell as the two women worked together.

“Were you really going to abandon those girls?” Nile had to know.

Andy shrugged. “For an hour or two.”

“Long enough for them to be terrified,” Nile interpreted and saw Andy nod in the mirror. “You had me convinced it would be longer.”

“Figured you’d get through to them faster if you believed I would.”

Andy’s gut punches never lost their sting, Nile thought. “I don’t think they’ve learned anything from this,” she noted sadly. “They’ll run home to rich, powerful parents who’ll pay someone else to bail them out.”

“I warned Copley this type of hostage rescue was not something we do.” Andy’s hands stilled as she reached the end of her share of the unbraiding. “He insisted it would help prove we could do other things.”

Nile undid the last braid and met Andy’s eyes in the mirror. “You don’t think it was worth it?”

Andy sighed heavily and stepped back. “It’s done. My feelings are irrelevant.”

Nile turned and studied her, seeing resignation edged with bitterness. “But you wish they’d been grateful. Not like, overly effusive, because that would’ve been awkward and you hate awkward, but a ‘thank you for risking your lives’ would’ve been nice.”

That garnered a rueful nod.

“And you hate feeling like we’re Copley’s puppets. Even if he found us a lovely place to stay. You’d have been happy to sleep in a tent.” Nile gestured to the well-appointed bedroom, which shared the bathroom with the room Andy had taken as hers; Joe and Nicky had the other room, which had an ensuite bathroom.

The look on Andy’s face confirmed Nile’s suspicions.

“Maybe we should sit down and talk it over; figure out ways to mitigate it but still keep it as an option.”

Andy shook her head. “We tried that before. It led us to Copley the first time. Better we know who holds the strings instead of guessing. At least this way, we aren’t as likely to run across someone with a grudge against us.” She paused. “Or someone who won’t take no for an answer.”

Nile’s eyes widened. “Is that why we did this last mission?”

“Copley wanted a reason to say we were busy. There are people out there who’d kill to have us as private security.”

“Men like Merrick.” Nile spat the name.

Andy nodded and crossed her arms as she leaned against the wall. “I spent the better part of a century guarding someone who promised he’d lead his people to a better life. He lied.”

Nile eyed her. “You didn’t care then the way you’d care now.”

Andy met her gaze. “No.” She lifted her chin, daring Nile to comment.

“But that means you know what to look for, right?”

Andy half-smiled. “The line between revolutionary hero and rebel is who’s telling the story. Question is – can you live with what you did, no matter what? Regrets can kill you.” She let that sink in. “Better shower while there’s hot water left.” She turned and exited the bedroom.

Nile sighed. Talking to Andy sometimes was like talking to a brick wall. As she showered, though, Nile wondered something she hadn’t considered before: what were Copley’s parameters? She had not been part of that conversation; too certain she didn’t have the experience the older immortals had to weigh in on the specifics of Andy’s order to Copley. If it led to missions like this one, where they curried favor with a power broker, where was the justice in that? Surely some other hostages, whose bad fortune included not being tied to anyone important, had equal or more weight? But if taking the mission meant they weren’t forced to guard someone who might be problematic, wasn’t that the better path? She wasn’t sorry they had rescued the hostages, only annoyed at who they’d turned out to be as people.

Aware she wouldn’t be able to solve anything while in the shower, she exhaled, closed her eyes, and stepped more into the shower spray so she could rinse out the shampoo in her hair.

So what the hostages had been spoiled brats? They were no longer Nile’s concern. Next week would be another mission; until then, Nile intended to soak up Egyptian history. Nile grinned briefly as she remembered Nicky teasing Joe about stumbling onto a bunch of tomb raiders because of loose goats. She wanted to hear the rest of the story and spend a little more leisure time with the three people who had become what mattered most to her.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, kudos, "I liked this!", and keyboard smashes welcome, even when this fic is "old" and I've long since forgotten I wrote it. I'm @raine_wynd on Twitter if you want to blather at me about this movie.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] What Matters Most](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732965) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




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